Mastercard Unveils ‘Crypto Partner Program’ with Major Industry Players

Mastercard announced today, March 11, that it launched a new Crypto Partner Program. The global initiative brings together more than 85 crypto firms, payments providers, and financial institutions to collaborate on the next phase of on-chain payments.

Per a video from Mastercard as part of the announcement, the crypto-native participants include Anchorage Digital, Aptos, Arc, Ava Labs, Binance, BitGo, Bybit, Circle, Cosmos, Fireblocks, Gemini, Mercuryo, MoonPay, Optimism, Paxos, Polygon, Rain, Ripple, and Solana — a broad cross-section of blockchain networks, custodians, exchanges, and stablecoin issuers.

The program is designed to let participants engage directly with Mastercard teams on the design and direction of future products and services, with a focus on connecting digital asset infrastructure to established card rails and global commerce flows, per Mastercard’s announcement.

The move formalizes what has been a rapidly expanding series of crypto partnerships for Mastercard over the past year, in some cases with crypto firms that are now part of the Crypto Partner Program, including Ripple, Gemini, and MoonPay.

In November, The Defiant reported that Ripple, Gemini, and WebBank teamed up with Mastercard to test settling Gemini Credit Card transactions using Ripple’s RLUSD stablecoin on the XRP Ledger — a move that would mark one of the first instances of a regulated U.S. bank settling traditional card transactions with a regulated stablecoin on a public blockchain.

Earlier, MoonPay issued a stablecoin-powered virtual card in collaboration with Mastercard.

As The Defiant reported last June, Mastercard partnered with blockchain oracle provider Chainlink — which was not in the list of participating firms today — to allow its more than 3 billion cardholders to purchase cryptocurrencies directly on-chain.

This article was generated with the assistance of AI workflows.